Starting this week, Thursday Night Football will begin airing exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. The Los Angeles Chargers face the Kansas City Chiefs in the outlet’s first broadcast. During Boomer & Gio Tuesday, co-host Gregg Giannotti said the NFL and Prime Video will make sure the partnership is portrayed as a success.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how many people watch it,” Boomer Esiason said. “If you go back and look at ratings on the NFL Network ratings for Thursday Night Football weren’t great, because people didn’t have it. According to Mike North who’s the VP Broadcasting for the NFL, he was telling us how everybody has Amazon Prime. There’s 200 million members so everybody should be able to watch the game wherever they want to watch the game. And if you live in either LA or Kansas City, you’re gonna get that over the air anyway. It’ll be interesting to see what the ratings are and what they look like.”
“You know what they’re gonna do, though, if they don’t have big numbers,” Giannotti said. “They’re gonna spin it in some way. Like ‘Most watched game on streaming service of all time’.”
“Of course they will,” Esiason added. “Like Mike North said last week, they’re gonna be partners with Amazon for what? 10 or 11 years? Apple TV+ will be a partner starting next year.”
“They’re gonna be kissing each other’s ass back and forth,” Giannotti said.
Amazon Prime Video has spared no expense to create broadcasts similar to that of network television, pairing Al Michaels with Kirk Herbstreit in the broadcast booth, with a cavalcade of former star players and Charissa Thompson working as the studio crew.